Pages

August 27, 2013

Database Versioning and Delivery with Upgrade ScriptsIn theory, the upgrade scripts should be written in such a way that they can be run without modifications on any environment. This means that they should not contain any paths, names of database instances, SQL user names or linked server configurations. In the Microsoft SQL Server world, SQLCMD variables can be used to achieve this. More information can be found here

Big data won’t be mature for at least five years, Gartner predicts
In the 2013 Hype Cycle, Gartner has changed its estimate for the time it will take big data to reach that plateau to between five and ten years. There are two trends driving big data down into the 'trough of disillusionment', Gartner said. The first is that "tools and techniques are being adopted ahead of learned expertise and any maturity/ optimization, which is creating confusion.

Do You Have the IT For the Coming Digital Wave?
It is no longer sufficient for IT just to be 'aligned' with your business objectives; a fusion is needed. As Angela Ahrendts, Burberry's CEO puts it: "I need [IT] to move from the back of the bus, where it traditionally sits, to the front of the bus...and it's traveling fast." It requires strong leadership from all senior IT executives, as well as new business acumen. Despite all the talk of ' shadow IT', digital transformations that happen without, or despite, IT are a myth.

Building a Finance, Risk, and Compliance Information and Analytics Infrastructure
The need to peer across a company’s information stores with much greater levels of granularity, consistency,
completeness and conﬁdence is understood. However, most companies contend with legacy distributed data environments. The result is that current data and analytical infrastructures ultimately underserve, or worse, fail to support ﬁnance, risk, compliance and treasury imperatives.

Transitioning from PCs to Mobile DevicesThe post-PC era is not marked by the extinction of personal computers, but rather by the prevalence of portable computing devices that have ended the unchallenged dominance of desktop and laptop computers in the lives of consumers. This phenomenon is the new norm. It can no longer be dismissed as a bleeding edge technology that major players provide at a high cost or a gimmicky feature that the average user doesn’t demand.

Data Security Lagging at Midmarket Industrial Firms"It seems as if executives at these large businesses understand something that executives at smaller businesses do not," the report notes. "This may reflect an assumption by smaller business executives that their data holds no interest for those seeking unauthorized access. This is a commonly held belief, but it is insufficient as a risk management strategy."

IBM preps its massive 12-headed Power 8 chipJeff Stuecheli, a systems architect at IBM, said the chips will be the brains of huge computer systems that will keep the complex e-commerce systems up and running in the future. He showed a prototype chip, but he declined to say when the Power 8 processor will ship. It could be a while still, since IBM just launched its Power 7 processors in 2012.

Unifying Virtual and Physical Data Center NetworksIncreasingly, enterprises are looking to SDN and network virtualisation as a means of easily deploying, managing, and orchestrating public and private cloud networks - tasks that have grown more complex due to the combination of physical and virtual assets. The partnership between Juniper Networks and VMware represents a shared commitment to delivering simplified, flexible solutions that enable customers to more easily migrate to SDN as their business needs evolve.

Multidomain MDM – Why It’s a Superior SolutionCommon sense tells you that when you’re trying to build a “single version of the truth,” a multidomain MDM approach would get you there faster. If you’re pulling together related master data from all over the company, it’s simpler and less expensive to store the “golden records” on customers, products, suppliers, employees, assets, locations – the people, places and things of master data – in one seamless technology stack.

To cloud or not to cloud your unified communications applications?There are no silver bullets here -- the best approach depends on the unique requirements of the business. Premises-based solutions remain the dominant approach, but many enterprises are moving away from unmanaged unified communications and collaboration. Surprisingly, neither premises nor hosted solutions offer any unique user-feature advantages.

Quote for the day:"Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects." -- Sima Qian